


Where The Red Came From

by Shutterbutters



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Tsukihime
Genre: F/M, Post Arcueid route, Post Fate route, Shirou is on his way to becoming something akin to Archer, because Nasu told us this story existed yet never made it himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-07-15 14:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16064819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shutterbutters/pseuds/Shutterbutters
Summary: Emiya Shirou is lost in the forests of Eastern Europe, lured by tales of monsters that snatch people in the dead of night. Rather than encountering the beasts however, he instead finds another person wandering the lonely woods: A blue-haired nun with superhuman strength and a terrifying collection of weaponry.





	1. The Wrong Feet

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place post Fate route of Fate/Stay Night, and post Arcueid route of Tsukihime.

Once again, Shirou Emiya found himself in quite the predicament; pinned to a tree in the middle of nowhere by a very, very strong agent of the church. His black shirt was pinned to the tree trunk with swords, and his neck was struggling not to crumple under the iron grip it was in. His attacker, a woman in a nun’s habit with eyes of cold flame, was trying to interrogate him. He wondered if she realized people needed their breath to speak.  
  


“What’s a dog of the Association doing all the way out here?” The woman snarled.  
  


“I’m not with them!” Shirou protested. “I came here on my own.”  
  


Her eyes softened. Her hold on his throat however, did not.  
  


“A rogue mage eh? That means you’ll be hunted by their enforcers soon enough. Give me a reason why I shouldn’t just save them the trouble and kill you right here.”  
  


“Please. I don’t want to fight. I’m here because of the disappearances...”  
  


Shirou gasped for air as the crazy churchwoman released him. He had never seen reinforcement magic on that level before; the woman was a head shorter and yet could hold him against a tree with a single hand. It had taken all his strength to keep her from crushing his windpipe. His mind swirled with relief as his body continued to gulp down the sweet night air of the forest. Maybe Tohsaka had been right. Maybe he really did spend all his time getting pushed around by girls.  
  


When his breathing had calmed and his head had stopped spinning, he picked up his duffel bag and took a look at the woman. She was dressed like a nun, with cerulean hair that matched her fiery eyes, and multiple short swords sticking between her fingers. Swords that were in fact, still pointed at him.  
  


Shirou gulped. She seemed extremely dangerous, and the last time he fought with a member of the church he had almost burned to a crisp in a pool of black mud. Maybe he should try being friendly? Despite threatening to kill him, something about her glare told him she couldn’t be all that bad. Perhaps she would listen to reason.  
  
  
“I hope that’s not how you treat everyone you meet.” He said. He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. The words held way more venom than he meant. When did he get this abrasive? He was starting to act like that annoying servant in red...  
  


“Not everyone.” She replied. “Just idiots who don’t know they’re walking into a Dead Apostle’s territory.”  
  


“Uh…”  
  


Oh he knew alright. As soon as he heard stories of mass kidnappings in the forests of eastern Europe, he left the desert sands to search for the missing people. Scores of nights spent tracking wheel trails and coaxing traumatized witnesses into talking led him to conclude that these were no ordinary kidnappers. Common sense would have told him to fall back, perhaps inform the Church or the Association and leave it to the professionals to handle, or at the very least search for some backup. Common sense however, had long since withered and died in Shirou’s mind.  
  


The woman watched him closely, before withdrawing her blades and placing her hands on her hips.  
  


“Unbelievable. You knew?”  
  
  
“Y-yeah. I wasn’t sure what exactly, but I knew whatever the kidnapper was, it wasn’t human.”  
  


She sighed. “You’re an even bigger idiot than Tohno.”  
  


“I’m sorry, who?”  
  


Her gaze dropped, and one hand began to stroke her other arm.  
  


“Nevermind. It’s nothing.”  
  


Shirou scratched his cheek. That was twice now that he failed to lighten the mood. Fortunately, giving up was never a part of his vocabulary. What was the saying again? Third time’s the charm? Time to try again, but this time, _friendlier._  
  


“I think we got off on the wrong feet. Foot. Um... Hi, I am Emiya Shirou- I mean, Shirou Emiya.” he said. Damn, his English needed work. He was still stumbling over words and messing up his introductions.  
  


“Ah, Japanese. You’re far from home.” She replied in his own language.  
  


Shirou’s eyes widened upon hearing her words. He hadn’t realized just how homesick he had become.  
  


It had been several years since he had left for London with Rin. The Clocktower had not been a welcoming place, certainly not for someone who barely qualified as a magus. After all, in that place of high academia where one was expected to peer into the mysteries of time and space, there should not have been a student who couldn’t do something as simple as repairing broken glass. In his time there he had felt nothing but constricted by the ever growing list of rules and ashamed at his utter uselessness to Rin, despite her best efforts to teach him. After graduation (she was at the top of her batch of course) he thanked her for all she did for him, then carefully explained he would not be taking the plane back home with her. It was time for him to follow his own path, which no longer lay alongside hers.  
  


Shirou blinked. While he was spacing out, the woman started walking away.  
  


“Please wait!” he pleaded, switching back to his native tongue, “I didn’t know anyone spoke Japanese this far out. What’s your name?”  
  


“Ciel.” The churchwoman said. “Don’t follow me.”


	2. Reintroduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course Emiya followed her. This did not sit well with Ciel.

Of course Emiya followed her. Stayed a stone’s throw away until night had fallen on the forest. Ciel could tell from his apologetic smile every time she told him to fuck off; this was another idiot who thought women all alone in the wilderness were there to look for saviors rather than having important business to attend to. This was a problem. An amateur like him could easily turn into another ghoul she would have to deal with. She had just begun thinking about shoving a black key between his eyes and using his corpse as bait, when he finally spoke up.  
  
“Before you decide to kill me Ciel-san, I fully believe you can do this on your own.”

She paused. He sounded honest, but If this was some kind of patronizing drivel she had a way worse fate in mind for him than vampire bait. Her fingers rubbed the hilt of a fresh black key just waiting to be deployed. She shouldn’t bother hearing him out. She should just flick her wrist backwards now and hide in the bushes till his dying gurgles attracted her prey. She shouldn’t even think about it.

But he sounded honest.

She turned to face him, hands balling into fists. _God-fucking-damnit._

“You have 10 seconds.”

He didn’t answer immediately. He let the night wind count the seconds down, the gentle breeze sighing a warning through the canopy of leaves. Ciel twitched her wrist early to see if he would react. He didn’t.

He waited until he was out of time.

“I just want to help.” He finally said. “That’s all.”  
  
“Who did you lose? A lover? A family member?”

He shook his head. “I never met any of the kidnapped victims.”

“Then. Why. Are. You. Here?”

He stared at her. “I want to help.”

Wrong answer. Ciel was on top of him in a flash, her free hand pinning him to the Earth while the other was pressing a black key to his ribs.

“That’s not good enough, Emiya-kun.” She said, dripping mocking venom into the honorific. “This isn’t a charity case to feed your survivor’s guilt. If a vampire gets you, you are worse than dead. You become a part of the problem. Another tool for the vampire to kill and destroy with. I don’t have the time nor the power to protect a fool who saves others just because he has to! I know your type. You’re not out to be a hero, you’re only saving people to save yourself from the guilt.”  
  
He never looked away, never flinched the whole time she tackled him and hissed spit into his eyes.  
  
“No.” He said.  
  
“No? Do you know how many of you I’ve met over the course of this job, boy? This life only ends one way for the likes of you.”  
  
“No. I know what you mean, and no. I’ve already been there. I’m not here out of some savior complex or survivor’s guilt. There were still plenty of people left to save in the desert.”  
  
Ciel narrowed her eyes, and pressed the key harder into his side. She felt his flesh give way to the steel, lacing the air between them with the familiar smell of blood.   
  
He still didn’t flinch.  
  
“Have you been to the villages the victims were from, Ciel-san?” He said. It was his turn to put on a cruel tone.

She didn’t need to. She had been on hundreds of these hunts, and she always had access to Roa’s knowledge and her own heightened senses to track a dead apostle with. Eyewitness accounts from frightened, confused villagers desperate for any news of their missing loved ones would tell her nothing. It was faster to go straight for the monster involved. More efficient. Safer as well, for everyone.

“No, I haven’t.”  
  
“I have. I went to the families of the missing. All of them, one by one, I asked each one what they saw and how long it had been. Do you know what they told me?”  
  
Ciel felt her stomach twist. She knew what he would say. Still... It didn’t make it any easier to hear.  
  
“They told me.” He continued. “That I was the first person to come by. Each family had gone to the government and all they were told was that a missing person’s case would be filed, no search parties made. They had gone to the media, and were told no reporter wanted to get lost in these woods for a story. They had gone to the Church, and were told that they would be in their prayers.”  
  
“It’s not like we could tell them what was going on-”  
  
“No one could tell them anything at all Ciel-san.” Emiya said, firmly but gently pushing her off him and standing back up. The black key slid off his ribs and clattered to the ground, blood seeping into the earth. It was only then that Ciel realized how tall he was, towering over her with his whole form shaking. Or maybe it was the raging blaze in his eyes that made her feel small.  
  
“They had nothing. No one. They were expected to live the rest of their lives praying that someday their son would come walking back in through their door, with nothing to go on but their grief and belief in a just God. Hah! Now what would that have come to?”  
  
Ciel’s arm shot out and grabbed him by his chest, effortlessly lifting him a couple of inches off the ground.  
  
“I would watch what you say about the efforts of God and his Church, Emiya-kun. Out here, I _am_ the Church. I am God’s justice. You make it sound like I have done and am doing nothing.”  
  
He grinned. The motherfucker was smirking at her!  
  
“What would you do then? Once you found the victims? Would you have known their names? Their faces? Bring back their bodies, or at least something from their pockets to return to their families?”  
  
“No.”  
  
His irritating grin grew wider. Uglier. It split his face in two, made all the more hideous by the way it made lies of what he said with his eyes. There was no mirth in them, only fury.   
  
“Then you might as well have done nothing. It’s all the same for them.”  
  
She wanted to stab him. Slash at him. Tear that horrible smile off his face and leave his mangled corpse behind. Yet, something about his eyes kept her still. They burned with rage, hatred almost, yet she didn’t feel like any of it was directed towards her.

Ciel could take a good guess as to what that was.

“I am here, Ciel-san, because there was nobody else coming, and no one ever would.”  
  
Ciel attempted to keep her stance harsh, but something in her chest twinged at Emiya’s words, making it more difficult than it had to be. She put him down. He stared at her for a while, before casting his eyes downward.

“I’m sorry.” He said, shame creeping into the spaces between his words. “I didn’t mean to put you or your work down. I can’t… I could never do what you do.”

Ciel felt taken aback by his change in attitude. She had never known anyone to back down when they were winning.   
  
“What did you plan to do then?” She asked.  
  
He shrugged, sending another droplet of blood oozing down his clothes. “I thought if I stayed quiet, moved quickly, and used daylight, I could at least find and ID the bodies.”  
  
“And what do you plan to do now?”  
  
“Same thing. I thought following an expert would lead me to them quicker.”  
  
Ciel sighed and retracted her black key. Sparing him was a mistake no doubt, but she wasn’t heartless. She couldn’t be. He was stupid to have wasted so much time and too kind to survive in this part of the world. But… Well…

There was a time when she would have done anything to protect someone like that.

She placed a hand on her hips. Oh well. If she was going to fuck up and bring an outsider into this, she could at least make this pleasant.

“Bleeding-heart types aren’t that much better, but I guess I’ll let it go this one time Emiya-kun.”

A little red crept into his face.  
  
“Please Ciel-san. It’s just Shirou.”

“And it’s just Ciel.”  
  
“Um. O-Okay. I’m pleased to meet you, Ciel. I won’t be a bother, I promise.”

Ciel pulled up her sleeves. “We can do the niceties later Emiy-I mean, Shirou. For now I need you to take off your shirt.”  
  
Now there was a _lot_ of red on his face.

“Wait, what?”

“Calm down.” Ciel said, rolling her eyes and placing her fingers on the stab wound. She was trying very hard not to casually glance at his stomach. He was surprisingly ripped.

“I just need to close your wound. These black keys are cursed to cancel out any regenerative abilities, so you’re going to keep bleeding unless I do something. After I’m done we’ll have to overturn whatever patch of soil you bled on. Can’t have that attracting the vampire and changing its movement patterns.”  
  
“Ciel.” Shirou said. His voice had gone ice cold.

  
“What is it?”

  
“I think it might be too late for that.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry this chapter took forever! I'm still at the weird point where I'm figuring out what I want to do with this fic. I'll do my best to make sure Chapter 3 doesn't take anywhere near this long!
> 
> Kick my ass over at shuttershocky.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first crossover fanfic, a cross between Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime. I've always loved how Nasu hinted that Archer may have gotten his iconic red overcoat from Ciel, but he never wrote that story himself for us to read. The idea of Emiya Shirou working with the overbearing, terrifying, adorable curry fiend has always tickled my fancy, and I thought I'd try to come up with my own interpretation of how their meeting might have happened.
> 
> I'm not sure how often I can update, although I will try to put up a short chapter once a month until it's done. Thank you very much for reading!


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